November 6, 2008, the three year mark of my precious son's death:

I have always loved the leaves at fall. Not so much the colors on the trees, although I enjoy them; but the leaves I enjoy the most are the dry ones on the ground. I love walking through a pile of leaves, hearing them crunch under my shoes. I have FOND memories of Swope Park in Kansas City, as a kid. My Dad would heap up a huge pile of leaves and my sister and I would run and jump into them, over and over and over. We have old home movies of that.

Most of all, though, I love dancing leaves. I can stand at my front door for quite a while, watching leaves dance down the street, across the yard & driveway, zip through the air.Today was extremely windy, even for the Kansas. The dancing leaves were everywhere! Some of them would blow in a straight line across my path as I drove, and I could hear them hitting the truck as I went through them. Other leaves danced in circles on the street, jumping up and down, swirling & twirling to unheard music. I was enchanted!

On the hill at the cemetery where the body of my boy lies, the leaves weren't doing a lot of dancing, but they did blow across the squares of land in random patterns (I know, I know, that's a contradiction, but that's how I saw it!). The wind howled around me as I changed the flowers in the vase, washed off the headstone, and sat a while pondering all that happened 3 years ago, and what life is like now.

Not a lot to say, but I can't let this day go by without saying SOMETHING. I can't believe it's been 3 years, I can't believe I've survived such a loss, I can't believe the mixture of sadness and peace I feel today.

I love you, Paul. Rest in peace.